from the must-we-remind-you dept

Remember back when Bill Gates said:

"If people had understood how patents would be granted when most of today's ideas were invented and had taken out patents, the industry would be at a complete standstill today... A future start-up with no patents of its own will be forced to pay whatever price the giants choose to impose."

Those days are long gone, apparently. In its latest patent litigation action, Microsoft has decided to sue Salesforce.com for infringing on a bunch of patents. Basically, it looks like Microsoft went through its collection of patents to find whatever they could that Salesforce might possibly infringe on. Take a look at the list:

7,251,653: Method and system for mapping between logical data and physical data

5,742,768: System and method for providing and displaying a web page having an embedded menu

5,644,737: Method and system for stacking toolbars in a computer display

6,542,164: Timing and velocity control for displaying graphical information

6,281,879: Timing and velocity control for displaying graphical information (the 164 patent above looks to just be a continuation of this patent)

5,845,077: Method and system for identifying and obtaining computer software from a remote computer

5,941,947: System and method for controlling access to data entities in a computer network

Amusingly, Microsoft and its super expensive lawyers were apparently in such a rush to file the lawsuit that they put the wrong patent number in on that second to last patent in the filing. Oops. Either way, look over that list of patents and try not to repeatedly shake your head in disbelief at the ridiculously broad nature of each and every one of those patents. And, then, since patent system defenders always remind us that it's the claims that matter, go take a look at the claims and wonder how these patents ever got approved in the first place. Going through that list of patents, you could use them to sue an awful lot of web-based service providers.

Hopefully (though, unlikely), the Supreme Court gets around to issuing its Bilski ruling and puts software patents like these out of their misery. Here's the full filing for anyone interested:

The state of patents is truly sad...

I am sure every website and software package on the planet violates one or more patents with everything they do. I don't mean one or more per site/package, I mean one or more for every feature! There is no use even looking up patents as you would not even create a new site or software package if you did. It is better to just do it and hope to never get sued or have the money to defend yourself or pay off the patent holder.

BIG Problem

I've got a big problem with 5 of those patents listed. Any patent that starts out with "system and method" or "method and system" (or other words to that effect) should be thrown out immediately. They are TOO DAMN VAGUE.

I'm just waiting to see the patent for "System and method for showing stuff on the interweb."

Re: BIG Problem

I've got a big problem with 5 of those patents listed. Any patent that starts out with "system and method" or "method and system" (or other words to that effect) should be thrown out immediately. They are TOO DAMN VAGUE.

To be fair, that's standard patent language and is somewhat meaningless in the title of the patent. It does, in fact, come down to what is that system and method (or method and system) which is supposed to be in the claims (though, often those are too damn vague as well...)

@11 yes they shuld be suing MMO's

PROB there is there is massive prior art in the form of ancient and old C and C++ code called MUDS.
they seemlessly ran on unix and linux and you needed to add code in the early days to make them run on windows in dos mode

now think about RPG's in the sense of vagueness and YOU a DM , and a few people OR even a solo adventure, could some of these patents run afoul of 1970's rpg's themselves?

I mean like ya so vague you can just laugh the good thing of this is hopefully they get whacked away and maybe if they keep suing we can clear out the BAD( SEE A USE FOR CAPS YET) patents that exist or they won't try ones they know are too vague.

Just a quick read fo the titles and heres what i see

7,251,653: Method and system for mapping between logical data and physical data
- could this be a dungeon map and the data that makes it so?
who knows its too vague to know what is the logical and what the data is to be

5,742,768: System and method for providing and displaying a web page having an embedded menu
- this could be the output of web.c if you ever modified your own to output the user name and some data on the players in a MUD, later web page based games do this all time and such

6,263,352: Automated web site creation using template driven generation of active server page applications
WEB.c of the MUDS does just this using a template to put certain data in a logical format and out to a webpage

6,542,164: Timing and velocity control for displaying graphical information
WEIRD one this is isn't time a kernal function and also somehting no one can copyright/patent as it has in fact according to physicists of M-Theory even existed before creation of the universe. NOW back to mud code well a certain amount a time goes buy and hte page is auto updated and the update page is generated and dropped into a web page area for viewing. MOST admins added avatars and such for each person or certain parts of that and the web page it self is a graphical representation as is anything displayed to you.

5,845,077: Method and system for identifying and obtaining computer software from a remote computer

haha sounds a lot like early remote bots and also like INTERMUD an addon for most types a circlemud and other muds like smaug where you can have remote servers talk to each other and thus create less loads and make even more diverse and larger worlds.

* 5,941,947: System and method for controlling access to data entities in a computer network
- is htis a database patent like the mother of database patents OR a login system?
UGH so vague who knows

Re: Re: BIG Problem

I suppose it just comes down to my disgust of software patents in general. The whole "sytem and method" verbology smacks of a wide net to capture all ways of doing Task A. If this company accomplishes Task A using their own algorithm written in C++, and another company writes their answer to Task A in Python, ONE patent should not be able to cover both situations. In fact, the patent shouldn't even exist, it's a ludicrous situation.

Re: Re:

Well, let's take the first one for example. Methods and systems for logical to physical data mapping is something that has existed since data and software development lifecycles have existed. Nearly all ERP systems employ this to some degree and those have been around since long before 1998, and most custom development would call this "abstraction".

Re:

@24 @27 HI TAM HOPE YOU ENJOY THE CAPS

i read as many did the titles which is what 99.9% of patent searches would do.

I am human and read English properly. i could just as easily say you did not read a thing i said and in my case at least i can verify it by the facts of what i wrote, versus what you did. IF you take the title and in most of the cases the summary of the patents at face values as YOU should this is the determination i come and get to.

Re: Re: Re:

Well, let's take the first one for example. Methods and systems for logical to physical data mapping is something that has existed since data and software development lifecycles have existed. Nearly all ERP systems employ this to some degree and those have been around since long before 1998, and most custom development would call this "abstraction".

That's not helpful. You're quoting the title, which has no legal force. The breadth of a patent's property right is determined by its broadest claim, which is usually Claim 1. So read the claim below and tell me how it is overly broad. And please keep in mind that it has a priority date of June 30, 2004.

Here's Claim 1:

1. A method in a computer system for providing a view of data, the method comprising:

providing physical data having standard and custom data, the standard data having entries with data for standard fields, the custom data having data for custom fields, the custom fields being represented by pivot data;

providing a map between standard and custom fields and logical fields of logical data;

providing a result set containing physical data from a standard field and a custom field;

organizing the physical data of the result set into logical data using the provided map; and

Re: @24 @27 HI TAM HOPE YOU ENJOY THE CAPS

i read as many did the titles which is what 99.9% of patent searches would do.

Something tells me that you've never actually done a patent search. Otherwise you would not spew such nonsense.

I am human and read English properly. i could just as easily say you did not read a thing i said and in my case at least i can verify it by the facts of what i wrote, versus what you did. IF you take the title and in most of the cases the summary of the patents at face values as YOU should this is the determination i come and get to.

Did you read the claims? Because that's where a patent gets its legal force. If all you read were the titles and abstracts, then you clearly do not know what the patents legally cover.

Re: Re: Re: Re:

Yes, I read the whole claim before posting. What they have described is a process I used building data warehouses for companies in the mid 90s. And the process is overly broad because it describes a process used by nearly every single software development effort that includes data.

I realize it would be hard for someone to understand that doesn't do this for a living. The basic waterfall lifecycle expects logical design to occur before physical design. The logical design includes the specification of data elements in a manner that is understandable from a business perspective. The physical design takes the specific technology into account, by de-normalizing where appropriate and creating other physical elements. The physical design must be mapped back to the logical design, especially in instances where a COTS product pre-specifies the target data store.

As I said, ERP systems expose logical data elements with which business users interact that is independent of how the data is stored, and a mapping is created and maintained.

Re: Re:

Considering MS has been declaired an illegal monopoly, but given a slap on the wrist once Bush took office. He made their problems go away. They still threaten their market, now that they have unleashed their inner patent troll... all bets are off.

Re: Re: Re: Re:

In point of fact data abstraction has been used and developed for since the first digital computers in the 1940s were made to aim and fire field guns.
It was certainly used in the first billing system computers IBM sold in the 1950s.
Long before GUIs and Gates started to, ahhhh, borrow BASIC and call it his own.

Re: Re: @24 @27 HI TAM HOPE YOU ENJOY THE CAPS

I've noticed that all you've added to this thread is griping about how you think no one else reads or understands the patents (and of course, you do), in spite of evidence to the contrary. I also see no useful rebuttal to any of those that have provided significant explanations in response to your requests for how the patents actually are too broad. Silence is golden.